A paper submitted by Philip Thoennes ’15 received Honorable Mention in the American Society of Comparative Law Younger Comparatists Committee’s Phanor J. Eder J.D. Prize in Comparative Law Competition.

Professor George Foster and Chris Helmer ’74 presented to a group of Oregon lawyers about how to handle some of the most common issues that arise in international civil litigation in the United States.

The present and the previous U.N. Special Rapporteurs on slavery have both responded to the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Workshop report on slavery in Mauritania, A Roadmap to Where? The report, published in November 2014, condemned the inadequacy of Mauritania’s plans to combat slavery in the country, still ranked worst in the world by the Global Slavery Index, and criticized the previous Special Rapporteur for her complacency over Mauritania’s inadequate measures to give effect to her comprehensive recommendations.

Lewis & Clark’s International Environmental Law Project (IELP) has been hired as a partner organization to conduct a comprehensive review of Malawi’s wildlife legislation and to make recommendations for amendment to ensure that the legislation reflects current international standards for wildlife legislation. IELP will evaluate the legislation using criteria agreed by the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and using the new Wildlife and Forest Crime Analytic Toolkit produced by the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC).

This report is a product of work undertaken by law students in the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Workshop at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, in association with the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation in The Hague. At the suggestion of UNPO, the Workshop selected for investigation and legal analysis the situation of the Haratin, an ethnic group suffering from slavery and an UNPO member, in Mauritania. This report will be used by UNPO in promoting the interests of its member, Haratin, represented by the Initiative de Résurgence du Mouvement Abolitionniste en Mauritanie (IRA), in international fora. The authors express their gratitude to Pierre Hegay, former Program Director at UNPO, for his continuing support and assistance; Johanna Green, current UNPO Program Manager; Tyler MacBeth for the cover design; Dianne Viales and Lisa Frenz for the production assistance; and Professor John P. Grant who offered exceptional guidance throughout this process.

Professor Varol presented a talk on stealth authoritarian practices in Turkey at a conference on Transitional Justice and Hybrid Regimes in Turkey and the Middle East, hosted at Cornell Law School.. He argued that the Turkish government has been relying on a set of stealth mechanisms of authoritarian control, which are more difficult to detect and eliminate than traditional mechanisms of authoritarianism. Among his co-panelists was the Hon. Sezgin Tanrikulu, a member of the Turkish Parliament. The event brought together scholars and practitioners from all over the world, including the President of the International Criminal Court, Sang-Hyun Song, who delivered the keynote address.